If you have made the investment of purchasing hearing aids and bettering your quality of life, congratulations! Now you will want to protect your investment and make sure you get as many years out of the hearing aids as possible. One way to prolong the life of your hearing aids as well as reducing the number of repairs is to purchase a Dry& Store box for them. You will also want to make sure you clean the hearing aids each day and get them serviced regularly (insert link for blog about cleaning/care here).
The Dry and Store box does a couple of different things for your hearing aids:
1) It dries out the moisture in the circuits and tubes of your instruments
2) It sanitizes your instruments
3) It is a safe place to keep your hearing aids when they are not in your ears
Hearing aid manufacturers report that nearly one-half of the instruments they see in for repair are not working properly due to moisture and/or earwax. Moisture from the body and the environment get inside the hearing aids and corrode the circuitry, battery compartment, and wiring. This causes the hearing aids to sound weak, distorted, intermittent, or sometimes to go completely dead. Using the Dry&Store nightly will keep your instruments running at their peak performance, not leaving you wondering if you’ll be able to hear what you need to hear in your everyday life.
Many hearing aid wearers complain of itchy ears or of the hearing aids having an unpleasant smell. Both the itching and the smell are caused by bacteria. There are several lines of Dry&Store that have germicidal UV-C lamps inside of them; these products help to sanitize the hearing aids so the wearer does not have itching in the ears or hearing aids that smell.
How do Dry&Stores work?
Well, there are a couple of different models, as I mentioned above…all of the models use a desiccant brick or pack inside. The desiccant drives down the humidity in the Dry&Store, no matter where you live and how high your humidity is. Most of the larger models (for home use) plug into the wall, but there are smaller/portable/travel Dry&Stores that simply use a desiccant brick and do not plug into the wall. Each night when you take out your hearing aids, place them in the Dry&Store, close it until it latches (or the light comes on, depending on the model), and leave it there until you get up in the morning. The desiccant bricks and packs need to be changed every 2-3 months.
While there are things that can go wrong when hearing aids are not properly cared for, purchasing and using a Dry&Store box is something that can go right. Prolong the life of your hearing aids, maximize their sound quality, sanitize them, and keep them somewhere safe all in one. Consider use of Dry&Store today!
Until next time…
Dr. Kristin
